Will Copts face Exile from Egypt?

The picture say's it all!

The scenes of recent days and night of Egypt’s indigenous Christian minority facing the brutality of the and Salafists means that the revolution is well and truly over. Western pundits and the much oppressed liberal voice within Egypt sincerely believed that Mubarak’s overthrow would be the transition to full democracy. Instead the dire warnings issued by revolutions in Iran, China, Russia and the mother of them all, that of France in 1789 have brought an uncompromising malice to the fore. Khomeini, Mao and Lenin did not create revolutions but let “useful idiots” do all their dirty work for them, only later to hijack and claim credit and institute a regime of terror, the stuff of nightmares. This much should have been obvious to Egypt’s liberals.

Robespierre did not just create the Terror. He was both its architect and its offspring. But then revolutions while providing good material for Hollywood always did reek of the same dishonesty as softcore pornography. Salafist groups have always made it plain that after the “Saturday people” it would be the turn of the “Sunday people”. And so it has come to pass. Revolutions by Hitler-worshipping Nasser and Gaddafi that overthrew monarchies in Egypt and Libya respectively, led to the expulsion of the former, the Jews. The unquenchable fires of anti-Semitism burnt wildly as the French decamped from Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, and as the Nazi-inspired Ba’ath party seized power in Syria and Iraq. Many Christians tried to ingratiate themselves with the majority, as not just fellow Arabs, but unflinching Arab nationalists. Syria’s Michel Aflaq was instrumental in founding Ba’ath. Tariq Aziz was the cuddly face of Saddam’s Iraq. George Habash made Arafat look positively soft. Hannan Ashrawi fulminated against the Zionists just as her fellow Christians were being exterminated by the PLO in Lebanon and became an ever precarious minority in what were to become the Palestinian territories. Across the Maghreb once vibrant minorities of French, Italians, Maltese and Armenians joined the Jews in the exodus that followed revolution and independence. Kurds remained a repressed minority across the region, ever to be enserfed by the Arabs. In Sudan the Black African, largely animist or Christian, became an unwanted bacillus fit only for slavery, quite literally. Yet even profession of Islam was no guarantee of security as Muslims in Darfur have discovered all too recently. Nothing could stop the unstoppable march of the Arab master race in its quest for lebensraum. The overthrow of Saddam demonstrated that hatred and totalitarianism has struck deep roots. Liberalism, democracy and tolerance have become alien concepts in a society where civil society has all but been gassed (as the Kurds found out). Iraq’s Christian minority now faces its own Holocaust from Salafists and supposedly secular Kurdish separatists.

All this should have been obvious when Egypt jubilantly celebrated its own revolution. While Copts have faced discrimination since Nasser’s supposedly secular military coup the forces that now lurk in the shadows and let others do the dirty work are making their presence felt. Unlike Mubarak, Sadat and Nasser they do not even pretend to be secular. But then was Egypt’s pre-1952 past ever going to emerge? Was this not a naïve assumption to say the least? Egypt after all is the birthplace of the Muslim Brotherhood which rejects everything a tolerant democratic state stands for. Ikhwan Musulmeen is the spiritual father to radical groups globally, notably Hamas. Does anyone still believe such groups will be democratic? As with Zimbabwe it will be one person, one vote, once. Then that will be it. As Goebbels admitted candidly the Nazis entered the Reichstag to destroy democracy, just as Hamas has done in Palestinian territories. The now persecution of Copts is already making plain a more toxic hatred than was found during the Mubarak regime. Can we afford to be naïve as the Egyptian liberals and sections of the western media would want us? When we look at how once vibrant and ancient Christian communities of Armenians and Assyrians were exterminated by the Ottoman Empire in 1895 and 1915, are we sure that this is not happening again? After all it was on the eve of his invasion of Poland in 1939, that Hitler calmly brushed off criticism that blitzkrieg would bring massive casualties to the Poles with: “Who today remembers the Armenians?”

Will anyone right now actually remember the Copts? The disturbing signs are that while we are being fed falsehood about the Ikhwan being democratic, the reality of dhimmitude is forcing Egyptian Christians to make a stark choice between even more retrenched religious apartheid and impending exile. At least the South Sudanese and Mizrahi Jews had separatism as a third option to avoid an “Armenian” future for daring to challenge dhimmitude.